Russian efforts to manipulate African Americans show sophistication of disinformation campaign

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

The Daily 202: Russian efforts to manipulate African Americans show sophistication of disinformation campaign

By James Hohmann
December 17 at 9:55 AM

THE BIG IDEA: A new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals that the Russians, in their bid to boost President Trump, have been more fixated than previously understood on trying to dampen African American political engagement.

Researchers at Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm, spent seven months analyzing millions of social media posts that major technology firms turned over to congressional investigators. Their goal was to understand the inner workings of the Internet Research Agency, which the U.S. government has charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 election.

It turns out that African Americans were targeted with more Facebook ads than any other group, including conservatives.

Three of the four most-liked Facebook posts put up by the Russian influence effort came from an account called Blacktivist that urged the community to be more cynical about politics. African Americans were urged to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein throughout the month before the 2016 election. A post on Oct. 29 that year declared: “NO LIVES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON. ONLY VOTES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON.” A message on Nov. 3 added: “NOT VOTING is a way to exercise our rights.”

On Twitter, four of the Russian agency’s five most‐retweeted accounts catered exclusively to African Americans.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/12/17/daily-202-russian-efforts-to-manipulate-african-americans-show-sophistication-of-disinformation-campaign/5c1739291b326b2d6629d4c6/

[zipplewrath]

1. Suppose they had help?

Various GOP entities have been involved in identifying how to demotivate AA voters from being able to, or choosing, to vote. One wonders if the Russians had contact with these entities to acquire the expertise.

[Anon-C]

4. Of course they had help such as Dr. Kochtopus...they were the first to start a concerted media...

... campaign to encourage blacks to politically disengage in the run up to the 2000 presidential election. They had a similar propped up third party stooge in Ralph Nader, and it worked.

[violetpastille]

2. African American voters are the most sophisticated voting bloc in history

The Russians are totally outclassed.

Meanwhile their magic totally worked up here in Portland on the pot smoking frog nazis.

[Kind of Blue]

5. Hear! Hear!

Ridiculous narrative in the ongoing tradition of scapegoating black people for not voting, not voting enough while at the same time blithely suppressing our vote as in the SC's decision in Shelby County v. Holder of 2013 that gutted protections from drawing electoral districts, placing restrictions on early voting, or requiring specific forms of voter identification.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Hey folks,it worked.

The facts are speaking for its self. Read the story if you can,pretty well run operation out of Russia.

[Kind of Blue]

6. I agree it did work for white folks.

Russians have been trying the bullshit on African-Americans since the 1930s. We should have been in the Soviet Union in droves by at least the early '50s or during the Cold War. But few of us fell for the crazy notion of replacing one oppressor for another.

I'm surprised this article did not cite gerrymandering, placing restrictions on early voting, or requiring specific forms of voter identification. But blame the Russians for low black turnout instead of the long tradition of anti-black voting suppression by country itself.

From what Pew reported our turnout fell 1% while the white voters turned fell by 0.4%.


http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/